


31 July 2020

by danpuff



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Birthday Cake, Birthday Fluff, Domestic Bliss, Domestic Fluff, Harry's Birthday, M/M, Marriage, Old Married Couple
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-31
Updated: 2020-07-31
Packaged: 2021-03-06 07:07:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,180
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25629442
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/danpuff/pseuds/danpuff
Summary: The morning of Harry's 40th birthday.
Relationships: Harry Potter/Severus Snape
Comments: 18
Kudos: 114





	31 July 2020

**Author's Note:**

> In the same universe as 16 July 2020, but can be read alone!

Later in the day, they will go to the Burrow. Hagrid will engulf Harry in a borderline painful hug, and Severus will neatly duck away from the same treatment. Hagrid grows bolder and bolder as the years pass. Severus will not manage to duck Molly Weasley’s hug, though his attempts will only be half-hearted. Severus will migrate into a shadowed corner, watching as Harry is treated to birthday wishes and hugs and handshakes from his overlarge family. Molly Weasley will bake him an extravagant, delicious cake. Thirty voices will sing to him. All of those Weasleys - Weasleys by blood or name or love - will shower him with love he so deserves, and gifts, which are nearly as nice. 

All night Harry will look at him, and smile at him, and touch his hand or his hair, perhaps a kiss on the cheek as he passes by. And it will be worth inane conversations with ex students, worth Hagrid’s drunken affection, worth the Weasleys’ Wheezes products exploding all over the yard, worth the noise and the mess. 

Before the Burrow, Severus has Harry to himself, and the mornings of Harry’s birthdays are always the best. He likes to think Harry agrees. Even if his husband now walks into the room, sighing as he flops heavily into a dining chair. Severus shoots him a glare, but since it is his birthday does not tell him that he’ll break the chair if he keeps treating it in such a manner. One hand continues lighting candles, the other grabs his wand to send the tea service to his husband. Harry’s lips quirk up as his sugars and milk are added, just the way he likes. 

“That gets more annoying by the year, you know?” Harry nods to the cake.

“That’s because there is one more every year,” Severus points out. 

Every year, Severus bakes a small cake for them to share as breakfast. They are never as pretty, nor as tasty, as Molly’s, but Harry loves them anyway. In fact, Harry fussed him the one year he forwent the breakfast cake, and pleaded with him until he made one for lunch. It was such a silly thing to nag about, when he’d receive a perfectly scrumptious dessert at the Burrow, but it had pleased Severus all the same. Even if he had called him a demanding brat and a greedy little boy. 

Every year, it is a cake for two, which makes Severus’s refusal to purchase number candles all the more alarming. Forty thin, gold candles overrun the entire top of the cake, a few even stuck into the edges. One by one Severus lights them with the first lit candle. It was the way Eileen had always lit Severus’s candles when he was a boy, and if it began over fond memories, it continued out of spite, and likely continues only now because it is tradition. 

Severus wonders if Harry will complain if he ever stops. 

“You’ll get wax all over my cake,” Harry gripes. 

“You’ve survived worse than ingesting wax.” 

When the last candle is lit, the first is put back in place, and Severus pushes the plate to the center of the table. Though Harry is making a solid effort to frown and glower, the green of his eyes sparkles in the candlelight. Even after two decades together, the sight of it dances in his heart and at that moment Harry smiles at him. 

It’s worth waking up at an ungodly hour to bake a blasted treacle sponge cake, that smile. Worth hunting down forty gold candles, finding space for them on the small surface, lighting them by hand. 

“Make your wish then,” Severus says.

“Aren’t you going to sing to me?”

“No.”

“C’mon. It’s my birthday.”

“No.” 

Harry huffs.

“Happy birthday, Harry. Now blow out the bloody candles, before wax gets everywhere.” 

Harry snorts, but obediently blows them out. It requires two breaks for air, but he manages them all, in the end. Then the pair begin the laborious process of plucking out each candle and dropping them onto a towel to be binned later. The cake beneath is riddled with holes and spots of gold wax. Molly Weasley’s creation will not look so pitiful, Severus thinks, but Harry laughs when he sees it, as he does every year. 

“This is why we have magic, you know,” Harry points out.

“Yes, Potter, that is precisely it. Well done. Aesthetically pleasing cakes are the reason we have magic.”

“Nice of you to appreciate my genius from time to time.”

“Hmph.” 

A flick of the wand causes a gold-wrapped gift to zoom into the room and, quite accidentally, knocks the glasses right from Harry’s face. Off of his face and right into his cup of tea. Severus had not quite meant all that, and stifles his laughter as Harry mutters and cleans the lenses. The gift circles his head impatiently, then drops into his hands once he is done. Harry shoots Severus a glare from behind his newly reinstated spectacles, then proceeds to unwrap the gift. 

It is a thick scarlet book entitled _The Imbecile’s Guide to Broomcraft_. Harry grins as he flips through the pages. “A thoughtful gift that manages to insult me at the same time? Perfect, Sev.” 

Yes, Severus had thought it perfect, with Harry’s new interest in broomcraft. He hides his smile behind a sip of tea. Harry does not hide his smile. His smile is large enough to be visible behind his teacup. Then he carries his fork and his teacup to Severus’s side of the table, and quite rudely plops into his lap. 

“You are not a child,” Severus grumps as Harry shifts into a more comfortable position.

“No, I’m forty. Didn’t you see _Witch Weekly_? I’m on the cover, you know.”

“No, I did not.” As if they did not print a special Harry Potter’s Birthday edition every year. This year he is in his handsome red and silver Wigtown Wanderers uniform, mounting the newest Sunracer 3000. _40 Never Looked So Good!_ the magazine proclaims, and they are right. 

“Shame. They, at least, were nice to me,” Harry says. 

“I’m nice. I made you a cake.” Severus stabs his fork into the cake and as Harry begins to say, “It’s covered in -!” he stuffs it into his mouth. Harry chuckles around the fork. He is nice and quiet while chewing, so Severus takes the next bite, and offers Harry the next. Harry’s fork lays forgotten on the table. 

The cake itself is soon forgotten. Forgotten when Severus tastes Harry’s jaw instead. Nibbles his neck instead. And his own fork is dropped so that he can slide both hands up both of Harry’s thighs as his husband shivers against him. Then uses his freed hands to tug at his pajamas. 

After, the cake is a bit smashed from Harry’s hand falling into it as he was bent over the table. He laughs when he sees it, but proclaims it is still edible. And he resumes his seat in Severus’s naked lap and feeds him a bite.


End file.
